AIDS - A killer at Large

In the summer of 1981 Dr.Michael Gottlieb in Pensylvania USA noted something strange with some of his patients. And he discovered that many of those patients were homosexuals.In June of 1981, Dr. Michael Gottlieb and colleagues published a short report in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) describing a group of patients treated for Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia. As the editors of MMWR noted, P. carinii infections in young, previously healthy individuals were unusual. To add to the mystery, it was noted that all of the patients were homosexual and exhibited signs of a severe immunodeficiency, leading to the speculation that a new, sexually transmitted pathogen could be responsible for this disease. Few people, most likely, speculated that this short report in MMWR was the first documentation of a major epidemic that would affect the world in a horrifically tragic way.

In the 26 years since 1981, researchers have learned a great deal about HIV and AIDS. It is safe to say that we know more about the human immunodeficiency virus than any other virus. As a result of this unprecedented examination of a virus, over 20 drugs effective against HIV have been approved for use in the US. Many people now believe we can view AIDS as a chronic, manageable disease. Yet, we still are faced with a global health crisis. An estimated 42 million people currently are infected with HIV. An additional 15,000 people become infected every day. Seventy per cent of the people with HIV/AIDS live in sub-Saharan Africa. For most of these people, the antiviral drugs are not available; for many, adequate health care is not available. And the ultimate preventative agent, a safe, effective vaccine, remains elusive.

To learn more about HIV/AIDS and the scientific process, we will spend the semester examining the chronology of the AIDS epidemic. By reading the breakthrough articles, and the corresponding news media accounts of these articles, we will trace the history of our understanding of HIV/AIDS. We will focus on understanding the science behind these articles and we will discuss the potential implications of the research. This approach, hopefully, will allow us to gain a better understanding of how we know what we know about HIV/AIDS and also demonstrate how scientific advances are predicated on previous advances